Two firefighter guards march across Tiananmen Square on Wednesday in Beijing. / Lintao Zhang, Getty Images

by Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY

by Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY

BEIJING â?? Twenty million flower pots, one for each resident of China's huge capital, have been laid citywide to welcome a major meeting of the Communist Party starting Thursday that will select the new leaders of China for the next decade.

The meeting is not open to the public, but party spokesman Cai Mingzhao insisted that the week-long gathering would "follow the principle of democracy and openness for news coverage."

Like the 90,000 cleaners sweeping Beijing's streets in preparation for the gathering, an unknown number of online censors are sweeping the nation's cyberspace.

Internet searches revealed that censors had stepped up efforts to block "sensitive" phrases including the meeting's very name and substitute words used to evade the ban.

Tightly scripted, and highly ceremonial, the selection of the 18th national congress of China's Communist Party nevertheless carries great significance for China, and, increasingly, the rest of the world.

This congress marks the formal takeover of what's called here the "fifth generation" of Communist leaders â?? Chairman Mao Zedong being the first. The new lineup of leaders, born in the 1950s, may face greater pressure to undertake political reform than the outgoing generation under Hu Jintao.

On Thursday morning, 2,268 delegates handpicked from across China will sit inside the Great Hall of the People -- a Stalinist hangover on Tiananmen Square - to hear current Communist Party chief Hu deliver a report on achievements since the last congress and future goals, Cai said.

By the meeting's Nov. 14 close, those delegates will elect about 370 members to serve as the party's central committee that, in turn, chooses the decision-making Politburo and the next general secretary, widely expected to be Xi Jinping.

A more closely watched, though equally secretive, selection process decides who his colleagues will be on the likely seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, China's apex of power. That lineup will be confirmed only when they walk out of the Great Hall (in order of party ranking) on Nov. 15.

All of the top jobs are chosen through intense horse-trading among outgoing and former leaders, although the party's public choreography was disturbed this year by the fall of Bo Xilai, a rising party boss once pegged for the Standing Committee.

Bo's wife was convicted of killing a British business rival, and Bo's former police chief accused Bo of massive graft and criminal activity in Chongqing. Bo's case is headed for China's party-led courts after his dismissal from the party on Sunday. It offers a "profound lesson" in tackling corruption for the ruling party, Cai said.

That education, however, does not extend to shifting from one-party rule.

"The political party system of China suits China's national reality," he affirmed Wednesday.

Cai said the congressional delegates are "broadly representative" of the wider party, which has 82 million members. Yet most Chinese have no clue how they are picked.

In recent months, leading intellectuals and government advisers warned the party must kick-start political reforms or risk greater threats to its rule. In a survey for the party-run Global Times newspaper released Wednesday, 81% of respondents said they supported political reform and 70% said gradual reform would be good for China.

"In the future I want China to be more open, so people will have a say to choose their leaders and speak out when they want," said Chen Xia, a professor of Chinese philosophy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think-tank.

Despite orchestrated displays of party loyalty visible nationwide, a strong current of skepticism runs online.

"Next time Chinese delegates could hold their meeting in America to save money on the tight security all over China, and at the same time they can visit their relatives and kids in America," asked Liu Guijuan, a Peking opera singer from Tianjin city, on the highly popular Sina Weibo microblog platform.

Liu was alluding to public displeasure over corruption among China's elite and officials, and their penchant for sending their children to elite Western universities. Xi Jinping's daughter studies at Harvard.

On Tiananmen Square, still dominated by Mao's mausoleum, a record-breaking, 100,000-flower pot display is named "Blessing for our motherland."

"This winter is colder than previous years. I think the flowers will die soon -- what a waste of money to decorate this meeting," said Zhao Jianlin, 30, a Sichuan chef in east Beijing.

In the shadow of the Great Hall of the People, Zhao hopes the party congress will focus on raising people's incomes and helping migrant workers from the countryside.

"I know the election result in America. I wish one day we could vote for our own leader directly, too, but I doubt we will see that in the next decade," he said.